OS 10.5 - How much RAM is sufficient for Leopard?

Now that Leopard's been here for a couple of weeks, I wanted to hear you opinion on how much RAM I should get for my Macbook (might be a switcher soon). I won't be running bootcamp or parallels. I'm debating over 1 or 2 GB.

1. I want to run Leopard without it lagging
2. I probably would use a combination of (nothing hardcore) iWork pages/itunes or safari/mail/iWork pages. Also, I would want to do occasional home video editing and iPhoto.

I don't know about Apple, but with Vista the system requirements are 800 MHz and 512 MB RAM. Now, can the OS boot up with that kind of speed and memory? Yes. But with all the software installed, will it run smoothly? No. It would lag to the point where it's almost impossible to use. I was asking if it was the same with Apple.

When I bought my Mac Pro, it came with 1 gb of memory. After the upgrade to Leopard, I was still waiting for my crucial memory to arrive. So I was using Leopard for about 2 weeks with 1 GB memory. It was ok, BUT I noticed a HUUUUUUGE speed boost when I added an additional 4 gigs of memory, so I definately suggest a memory upgrade!

Unless you are a very casual user that just checks email and some basic browsing, I would upgrade as far as you can afford to. More RAM will not hurt and help if you run a lot of applications at the same time.

I know a few people running Leopard with 1GB with no complaints, but I personally would recommend 2GB - there's quite a noticeable difference between 1GB and 2GB (it was a big improvement on Tiger, but even more so on Leopard in my opinion).

There are the requirements of Leopard. If you meet them then I don't see why it would lag.

Even Tiger lags with 512MB of RAM on an intel machine. I don't think people realise how much memory applications take now and how many apps they have sitting open usually. Right now I am on Leopard, I have these apps just sitting away in the background (this is normal for me)

- Camino (3 tabs)
- Entourage
- iTunes
- Adium
- Stickies
- iPhoto

I also have Blackberry Sync in the background

My machine is showing 651MB free RAM (I have 2gigs). If I open or close an app, it's silky smooth, but with only a gig it would have been caching and swapping 2 or 3 apps ago.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.
- Joan D. Vinge

With 1 GB I got lots of page outs with my imac under 10.4 and with 2 GB I have none. But I still have a little free memory and heaps of inactive memory and that's after playing games and sound/video editing. I would have to agree that 2GB seems to be a realistic minimum for a smooth running Mac.

My wife and daughters all have 1Gb on their Macbooks and 2 of them are running leopard (I haven't managed to pry the laptop off the other daughter yet). They all run quite happily with that much RAM although none of them are power users. My Mac mini has 2Gb and acts as the home server quite happily with leopard. My iBook has 1.5Gb and my Mac pro 6Gb and again no probs.

Basically I don't think it is any worse or better than tiger RAM wise. I will be updating my wife's Macbook to 2Gb shortly so will be able see the difference.

Experienced computer user, applications programmer and component level service engineer but came to the Apple platform with intro of intel!. Pro-photographer and director of electronics company.